


Sweeter With Fear

by Artemis1000



Category: Original Work
Genre: Demon Summoning, Established Relationship, F/F, Fear Play, Manipulative Relationship, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-06-30 07:44:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15747342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: Madeleine was proud of the power she wielded over the demons she summoned, yet the Laughing Demon Risa held just as much power over her. Or maybe she didn't mind quite as much as she ought to, for did not everything taste sweeter with fear?





	Sweeter With Fear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



_What do you fear?_

For thirteen years of her apprenticeship, Mistress Joanne had asked this question over and over again.

As a child, Madeleine’s fears had been small. She feared never seeing her parents or siblings again, and the monsters under her bed, the ominous creaking of the staircase that echoed through her mistress’s entire house.

As she grew, Madeleine’s fears grew with her. She learned that monsters were real and couldn’t be confined under beds or inside closets, but they could be trapped and leashed and bent to do your bidding.

Madeleine was fifteen the first time she summoned a demon all by herself; every step her own from the intricate chalk circles that had taken three weeks to draw over and over again until they were perfect to the chants she had practiced until her voice was hoarse. Most of all, she bore all the risk to her soul, her sanity, her very life if she lost the battle of wills that would take place once the summoning took hold.

Afterward, once she had banished the demon and stood in front of her mistress, she had looked into her eyes and told her, “I fear nothing.”

At twenty-five, Madeleine knew she had understood the world less at fifteen than at five.

At twenty-five, Madeleine knew she had been right to fear the monsters under her bed.

 

_3 months earlier_

Sweat was running down Madeleine’s face, it itched as it slowly ran down from her neck along the length of her back. She didn’t waver, kept kneeling within the protective circle of candles, head lowered, eyes squeezed shut. In her mind, she kept visualizing the symbols she had painstakingly painted in chalk and ash and bone onto the ground, the walls, even the ceiling of the stone cavern carved deep into the bowels of the earth underneath her mountain home.

There were two circles, the summoner’s and the demon’s circles, bedded amidst ancient symbols of power and binding.

She had pinned up her hair before she started the ritual but the braids had come loose hours ago, now damp blonde strands were sticking to her face and neck and these were itching, too. She did not dare move, did not dare to break her concentration even so much as to brush her hair out of her face.

One moment’s mistake and her soul, her body, her life would be torn from her. Some things were too old and too angry to be disturbed without consequences.

The air felt tight, hot and thick, every breath she took more of a struggle than the last until her lungs were burning and her throat ached with the effort. And still, Madeleine kept chanting.

 _Something_ shifted, as if reality had taken a small step to the left.

There were eyes. Eyes in the dark.

And Madeleine kept chanting.

A cold wind blew over the exposed back of her neck. On the next gust, it ruffled the hem of her black summoner’s cloak – spun and woven and sewn by her own hands, her will infused into it every step of the way.

At twenty-four years, Madeleine Worth was a dainty woman with a pale, heart-shaped face and thoroughly ordinary blue-grey eyes, and her voice held the power to unleash small-to-medium hell on earth.

The darkness thickened, it tightened until taking another breath became impossible.

Madeleine rose to her feet and flicked the tip of the bone-and-obsidian demon knife over her left palm. In the same practiced movement, she flicked the drops of blood clinging to the blade into the demon’s circle.

“I command you!” she intoned with the last breath she had. The very last breath she would ever have if her spell did not take.

The air thickened and compressed her. She did not even try to force another breath into her burning lungs.

The world in front of her eyes blurred even as the world within her mind caught fire, hellfire.

The last thing she saw were shadows darker than all others taking shape within the circle of summoning and then she was falling into shadows herself – Madeleine was laughing as she fell.

 

She awoke to laughter; cackling, gleeful laughter that reverberated from all around the cavern. It sounded like a dozen voices laughing in distorted echoes, then a hundred, each and every one of them tearing at Madeleine’s mind until they turned into screams in her ears.

She slammed a fist onto the ground and gritted out, “enough,” just before the chorus of a hundred could turn into a thousand.

The voices went silent, and Madeleine raised her head, narrowed eyes framed by blonde curls that did little to sweeten her glare.

She had fallen well within the circle of protection, she noted with satisfaction, and the writhing shadows remained safely ensconced in the other circle. She gulped hard. It was the only reason she wasn’t dead, or worse.

“Show yourself, demon.”

Laughter, again laughter. Always laughter. The Laughing Demon always lived up to her name.

Madeleine’s thin, bony fingers tightened around the handle of the knife. “Show yourself to your Master.”

The darkness wavered and writhed and reshaped itself.

Red eyes gleamed bright, half a head higher than Madeleine’s, and then it looked like the dark shadows were melting away starting at the eyes and revealing a woman’s body.

Madeleine stepped outside her circle. She reached up with her left hand to remove the pins from her hair, letting it fall down in a honey-gold tumble now dulled and slackened with sweat.

Risa showed no signs of exhaustion, she was beautiful in the way only magical things could be. It was an eerie, doll-like beauty that had always struck Madeleine as just on the wrong side of uncanny. Gleaming embers of eyes were set in a perfectly chiseled face with a perfect nose and sensual full lips which could pout with the best of them. Delicate dark horns rose from the flame-red curls of her hair and when she laughed, Madeleine knew her teeth would be sharp and gleaming white.

She wore an exact copy of Madeleine’s summoner cloak, identical right down to the red embroidery at the hem and the clasp with the sigil of the summoner’s order she had long since broken with.

Madeleine’s bare feet halted at the edge of the demon’s circle and she looked up into gleaming red eyes – hellfire-red. Her breath caught in her throat and her heart raced, it beat too fast, too hard, like it was yet another dangerous wild monster trying to escape her grasp.

Oh, but Risa was beautiful in all her otherworldliness, it only made her more beautiful.

Slowly, Madeleine’s right foot slid forward and blurred the circle of chalk.

“I promised that if they banished you, I would just bring you back, didn’t I?”

There was a moment of perfect stillness between summoner and summoned.

Then Risa sped forward – not quite running, nothing so mundane, she stood in the middle of her circle when Madeleine closed her eyes to blink and when she opened them again, the demon was right in front of her, a mere hand’s breadth separating them.

Clawed fingers grasped her chin. They were hot, scorching hot, and the tips of Risa’s claws dug into her skin. She forced Madeleine’s head back, as if she would not have been spellbound by her burning eyes anyway. Her other hand wrapped around her throat - this hand burned with cold.

Madeleine shivered, then shivered again when Risa’s icy hand slipped down from her throat to dip into the hollow of her collarbone and curled around the fastening of her cloak as if she was about to rip it off and lay her bare.

Still firmly in the demon’s grasp, Madeleine shivered. She licked her dry lips and held her gaze.

“You are still reckless, beloved.” There was laughter in Risa’s voice, as was to be expected, really.

“Not reckless.” She lifted the hand still holding the demon knife, and pressed the obsidian tip against Risa’s throat. Her body still felt weak and shaky, all the more so in Risa’s grasp, but her hand remained as steady as her gaze. “I prefer to call it confident.”

“Foolish.”

Madeleine dropped the knife. She used the same hand to cup Risa’s cheek and rubbed her thumb over the demon’s perfectly shaped lips. “And yet I brought you back when our enemies thought they had defeated us.”

Risa laughed, yet there was no mockery to it this time, only fondness. “Because nobody else is foolish enough to summon the same demon twice.”

Madeleine’s lips curled into a smile of her own. “I told you. An entire coven’s power is nothing against mine.”

Risa’s gaze dropped from Madeleine’s eyes to her lips, and if such a thing was even possible, Madeleine felt her heartbeat speed up further. Her tongue darted out again to wet her parched lips.

“You greet me with a hand on my throat when I had hoped for a kiss.” She did make sure she sounded mocking, but it wasn’t like she could keep the genuine hurt completely out of her voice. It had been a long and lonely six months.

Risa laughed. “Foolish.”

And then finally, Risa’s lips found hers and Madeleine knew the brimstone taste of Risa’s lips was how victory tasted.

 

Risa was as eager to explore the abandoned mountain fortress that had become Madeleine’s home as she was to explore the limits of the new corporeal form she had chosen for herself. Madeleine’s eyes followed her wherever she went.

It had been six months since Risa was taken from her, a demon unleashed wreaking havoc and drawing more well-intentioned saviors than Risa could handle by herself.

It had been fortunate for Madeleine that they had all assumed no summoner would be strong or foolish enough to command a summon of the Laughing Demon’s power, or to let it bring destruction as it pleased. She had walked out of the wizarding village unscathed, just another maid fleeing the ravaged wizarding settlement, doomed to fall prey to bandits for her recklessness of braving the roads alone.

She had smiled and politely thanked everybody who voiced their concern, and that night on the road, she had dreamed of the hellfire she would rain down on all those who had taken Risa from her, just like they had taken Mistress Joanne from her years ago.

 _A most unnatural art_ was what wizards called the summoning of demons, a magic wielded by those who were not born magical and thus, a magic outside the bounds of nature as they understood it.

Power seized by those who did not fear to be powerful, Madeleine preferred to call it.

Six months of studies and honing of her skills until she was ready to do what was called impossible even by a people who thrived on impossible deeds.

Nobody was foolish enough to summon the same demon twice.

She had, and now she held the demon in her arms, clinging to her, her face buried in red curls and deeply inhaling the scent of brimstone that still clung to her. “They say words of power never work twice,” she whispered into Risa’s ear.

Risa did not turn around to face her, her eyes remained fixed on some point in the distance. She had been staring out of the window for quite a while now. It was dark but demons saw the world differently than humans did, Madeleine could not even begin to fathom what Risa saw or what she hoped to find. A demon’s world had many layers, while a human’s only had one.

“Yours did?” Risa laughed. “I am here, and you are not dead.”

Madeleine tightened her embrace. “I am not. And neither are you.”

 

On her worse days, Madeleine had seen nothing but crumbling stone and moldy wall hangings when she wandered through the few parts of the fortress that had withstood time at all.

On her better days, she had entertained fanciful dreams of restoring it to its former glory. It had all the makings of a castle to a queen if you squinted.

With Risa, her dreams seemed more and more like possibilities with every passing day.

The fire in the hearth burned hotter and brighter, the stale waybread and jerky she had left turned into a meal fit for a queen as soon as it met her tongue. Molten snow tasted of sweetest wine and carried only the faintest aftertaste of brimstone.

“I did not command you to make my life comfortable,” she told Risa with a frown the first time they dined together.

“You do not need to command for me to know your desires, beloved,” Risa purred into her ear.

Madeleine never questioned it again.

 

For all that they shared, Madeleine had never shared her body with Risa.

To sleep with your own summon was a taboo she had been loathe to break, not for moral qualms but out of fear that it would be one line too many crossed.

Madeleine still feared.

And yet, Risa’s voice whispered to her by day even when she could not be seen and by night she haunted her dreams. Every night, she awoke with brimstone on her lips and a tight heat curling low in her belly. When she slipped a hand between her legs she would find herself slick with desire and guiltily wishing the fingers bringing her to orgasm sported claws.

In the morning, Risa would greet her with a knowing smile that sent cold shivers down Madeleine’s spine.

 

“Do you not love me, Mistress?” Risa would pout when Madeleine pushed her away yet again, and then she would retreat to sulk and haunt her through the wind and the shadows whilst she denied Madeleine her real, tangible presence until her mood shifted back to cruel laughter – Madeleine preferred to think it was until she commanded Risa to return to her side, but she knew when she was deluding herself.

“Do you not love me, Mistress?” Risa asked today.

Madeleine looked up from the ancient tome she was studying, a frown in the works. Risa only ever called her _Mistress_ when she was in a mood to be cruel.

Risa’s return had brought many changes. The fortress sported a library now, with a giant roaring fireplace and settees so comfortable you could spend all day and night there and barely notice the passing of time.

The demoness knelt at Madeleine’s feet, a sweet pout on her full red lips, yet the claws gripping Madeleine’s knee dug in deep and hard.

Madeleine’s thoughts returned to the day of her second summoning, and how these claws had felt wrapped around her throat. She swallowed, her own hand going up to touch her throat in all the places where she had later found claw marks, and kept caressing them late at night, _remembering_ , until the marks had faded too.

When she caught herself, caught the knowing-amused glint in Risa’s eyes, she dropped her hand as if it had been burned. “I have summoned you,” she reminded her sternly, “and you are to do my bidding.”

“And is this not what I am doing, Mistress?” Risa breathed as she lifted herself a little higher, putting more weight on Madeleine’s knee in the process. Her claws dug in deeper, not quite cutting through her dress and drawing blood, but close enough to make it a threat. “Am I not fulfilling your every desire before you even voice it?”

Madeleine’s heartbeat echoed in her ears. Risa’s eyes were glinting, and she was smiling. She was always smiling. Sometimes, Madeleine hated her smile, most often when it was as sharp as it was now – and yet, this was when she loved it most, too. She had never had much use for weakness. “You are to do my bidding,” she repeated, both to remind Risa and herself.

She was the Master, so she ought to command.

Risa’s smile changed, turning into something on the verge of pitying. “If this is what my Mistress wishes…”

Their lips found another again. Madeleine’s eyes fluttered shut.

Risa’s mouth against hers vanished.

When Madeleine opened her eyes, she was gone.

Later, she found claw-shaped tears in her dress where Risa had clutched her knee.

 

That night, she dreamed of Risa just like every other night.

She knew she was dreaming. Risa never looked so human outside her dreams, and despite all endearments, she never looked at her with such love.

They were in the great hall of the fortress, only it had turned into the great hall of a beautiful castle, complete with a golden throne on which Madeleine sat while Risa knelt at her feet. Human fingers were clutching her knee while her other hand kept Madeleine’s skirts scrunched up on her lap.

When Madeleine looked down, she could see nothing except bunched skirts and Risa’s fiery hair, her head buried between her legs.

Risa’s tongue was warm, neither burning with heat nor with cold when she lapped at her folds and thrust inside her.

“Is this what you want, beloved?” Risa’s voice whispered to her.

 

Madeleine opened her eyes to darkness and the echo of Risa’s voice still clinging to her.

She turned her head, hoping to catch a glimpse of morning light, and looked right into glowing red embers.

She screamed, heart rate spiking, sitting up in bed and scrambling away, away, to the very edge of the far side of the bed, except then she blinked and felt Risa’s heat right behind her, and clawed hands yanked at her hair, forcing her head back so she looked up into burning red all over again.

“Do you want me on my knees, beloved?” Risa asked. She sounded friendly, perfectly conversational even. Her grip on Madeleine’s hair turned from uncomfortable to painful.

Madeleine gritted her teeth and settled on silence for her defiance.

“You don’t need to answer,” Risa informed her, not unkindly, “I have seen your dreams.”

She gritted her teeth against the sharp sting of pain at her scalp and the welling up in her eyes in response; silently she vowed she wouldn’t make a sound, no matter what.

“What I want is for you to obey, demon!”, she snapped. You didn’t make it where she was by showing fear.

Risa brought her face closer. They were so close they might as well have been about to kiss. She could feel Risa’s breath against her face, a breath the demon didn’t even need to take. Sometimes, Risa liked to play at humanity. Just like now, when her other hand reached out to caress Madeleine’s cheek so tenderly. “But I am, beloved,” she whispered right into her ear, burning hot lips brushing against the shell of her ear. Sharp teeth pricked at her earlobe. “I am giving you what you want before you think to ask for it.”

Madeleine shivered and squeezed her eyes shut before she could give away even more than she had.

“Yes,” the demon whispered, “just like that. Let me obey you, beloved.” Her voice was echoed by many-voiced, cackling laughter.

The fortress’s nighttime chill seeped through her thin nightdress, and when she shivered again, Madeleine told herself that it was only the cold that made goosebumps rise on her skin.

She didn’t resist when Risa nudged her back onto the bed, stretched her out on top of her blankets, just the nightshirt between her and the cold – between her and the demon who perched on the edge of the bed like a predator waiting to strike.

“Lights,” Madeleine murmured. She licked her lips. She ought to speak loud, to voice her demands with strength, yet it felt wrong to disturb the quiet. She reached out, using the twin glow of Risa’s eyes to find her face, and cupped her cheek. “Please. I want to see you.”

“Mhmm… I like it when you say please.” Risa turned her head, she caught the fingers that had been caressing her cheek between sharp teeth.

A few oil lamps along the walls lit themselves, throwing ominous shadows onto the walls, all the while doing little to illuminate Risa’s face.

They did illuminate the clawed hand that reached for her. It caressed her face and traced the curve of her jaw before it trailed down her throat. Claws dug in, scraping along her jugular vein, and Madeleine sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes so very wide and her heart beating hard against her chest.

The demon’s laughter filled the room like it was something living; it came from the walls, it came from within Risa though her lips never moved.

“You are beautiful,” Madeleine sighed. The claws dug deeper into the soft skin of her throat. Maybe they would leave marks again, something she could hold on to by daylight. Oh, she hoped Risa would leave marks.

“I could kill you.” Risa leaned down, nose to nose with her.

She exhaled slowly. “You could.” Inhaled just as slowly. “I would not want you if you could not.” Reached up to explore the demon’s horns. “I miss when you had wings.” Risa had had large leathery wings the first time she was summoned. Madeleine had spent many a night wishing she could fall asleep enfolded in them.

“You failed me. You’ll have to earn back the wings,” Risa declared, the laughter in her voice mocking now, yet there was no sharpness to her mockery. She sounded gentle, affectionate even.

Madeleine sighed. She should not be entertaining it. It was one taboo too many broken, one line too many crossed when she was already playing with fire.

And yet what about the burning within her? What about Risa’s touch that was hot and cold, about the dreams that would give her no peace? What about having the courage to take the things you wanted?

Risa was still nose to nose with her. It took no effort at all to raise her head the tiniest bit and press her lips against Risa’s.

The demon laughed, deep and rich and cackling, and Madeleine blinked.

When she opened her eyes, Risa was pinning her to the bed and there were no wings curving from her back, but the wispy darker-than-the-shadows shadows of wings sheltered them as they kissed. Risa’s left hand once again gripped her hair tight enough to hurt, while the right…

Sharp claws tore through her nightshirt, no effort needed at all, and sent tatters of fabric flying. Madeleine bit down hard on Risa’s bottom lip, as hard as she could, but the demon just cackled again and ripped off the last vestiges of clothing that still clung to her.

Madeleine yanked her mouth away, seething with fury and a different kind of heat that burned hotter yet and hissed, “I hope you realize I’ll have a pound of your flesh for that.”

Risa buried her head in the hollow of her throat and bit down. Hard. “You can try, beloved, but leave it for the morning.”

Still seething, she could have thought of a thousand terrible things to do in retaliation, of all the ways a summoner could force obedience from a demon or do nothing at all but make it hurt, but Risa’s teeth were still maddeningly sharp, and her laughter echoed in her ears, and at some point she must have dropped the illusion of clothes, for when Madeleine reached for her, she found nothing but bare skin.

So reach for her she did, her hands starting out at her shoulder blades and sticking chastely to the elegant arch of her back until Risa’s lips wandered lower. It was only then that Madeleine’s hands followed suit, exploring the curve of her breasts just as Risa’s fangs nipped at a pebbled nipple. She bit down hard and Madeleine yelped, then gritted her teeth for _she would not submit_.

She did not submit, but she did whimper her need when a hot, rough tongue chased away the sting, flicking over her nipple time and again with such lavish abandon that Madeleine found herself squirming, hips moving against thin air with each small spark of arousal sent straight to her groin – each one a reminder where she truly yearned to feel Risa’s tongue.

And yet, she could not, _would_ not beg.

Not when claws scraped over her belly and her thighs and still not where she needed her most.

But she did not need to beg.

There was no sweetness, not even any teasing to her own blunt fingers slipping between Risa’s legs, a quick dip between her folds with two long, clever fingers, a pleased little laugh of her own when she found her hellfire-hot and soaking wet. Risa mewled, body going taut against her, the shadow of wings spreading wide. Madeleine smirked as she let the very tips of her fingers slide inside her, once, twice; she relished in the way Risa jerked her hips down to meet her – and withdrew before she could. The hush was filled by obscenely wet noises as she ran her slick fingers up and down along her lips until they found the spot that made Risa jerk faster and harder than before.

Madeleine laughed and pressed her advantage.

Fangs bit down on her breast, on the very edge of breaking her skin, _threatening_ to.

Madeleine just laughed louder; Risa’s frustrated growl was just as sweet to her ears as the moans that followed it.

The demon shifted and slid higher again, silencing her laughs of victory with a kiss that was harder and sported more fangs than any other they had shared before.

And still, Madeleine did not stop, not even when Risa’s claws finally found her core. They were sharp – too sharp, it raced through her mind, fear and arousal both spiking, making her stomach clench with sweet dread. Risa gave her no time to let fear or reason win out, her claws sank right into her, thrusting in as deep as her fingers would reach.

Madeleine gasped into the kiss, hips jerking but not moving anywhere as she was torn between the desire for more and the sweet fear still thrumming through her. Too late, far too late to keep up any pretense, she realized her own hand had stilled. She coated her fingers anew with Risa’s slick and flicked hard, long strokes over her clit, hard and fast, then tender little circles when the demon shook against her, and pressed down again when Risa thrust a third claw into her.

The moment blurred, stretching and moving reality just a little bit sideways like a summoning, yet the only words of power spoken were moans, pleas – later, Madeleine would not be able to say for sure which one of them had pleaded first, but she would deny that it might have been her.

Now, she only knew Risa’s fanged kisses, Risa’s claws and the demon twitching and growling and jerking not-quite-manifested shadowy wings with every stroke of her fingers.

After all these months of guilty, forbidden desires it was over too fast – a shock, almost, how fast, how hard her orgasm washed over her to the sound of Risa’s cackling laughter. She was barely even aware of it when Risa came above her with a snarl, and certainly far too caught up in her own pleasure to gloat.

Even in the chill of her bedchambers, Madeleine was slick with sweat when she sank back into the mattress, Risa still hovering over her, then slumping onto her, pressing down hard. Madeleine didn’t have it in her to protest the loss of dignity.

She wiped off her hand on the sheets.

Risa licked her fingers clean and flashed her a smirk. “Delicious,” she purred right before she bit another hard kiss into Madeleine’s shoulder.

“You…” Madeleine stared at the ceiling. She felt pleasantly exhausted and weak, less pleasantly so sucked dry of every spiteful thing she could have found to say.

“Don’t pout,” Risa cooed. “it doesn’t suit you.”

She gritted her teeth against a sharp flare of annoyance. Risa was still pinning her to the bed, too.

“Don’t pout,” the demon repeated, a sweet whisper cooed right into her ear. “Are you not happy?”

Slowly, Madeleine lifted her arms and wrapped them around Risa’s naked body. She was hot, unnaturally so, but not sweaty. Slowly, she tightened the embrace and let it sink in that she had crossed the line – and it hadn’t cost her life or her mind or anything else the horror stories whispered of.

No words of power unsaid, no bindings undone. They were still who they had been before, and Risa hadn’t turned on her.

She exhaled.

“See?” Risa raised her head to meet her eyes. Suddenly, somehow, the few oil lamps gave enough light for their eyes to meet properly. She did not laugh, she wasn’t even smiling. “I could kill you, but I will not.”

It was, Madeleine decided, good enough for her. She pulled Risa into another kiss tasting of brimstone.

 

At twenty-five years of age, whilst the wizarding village burned around her, Madeleine knew she had been right to fear the monsters under her bed.

She made her way daintily through the landscape of crumbled houses and sputtering, dying green spellfire battling ever strengthening red hellfire.

The hem of her summoner’s cloak trailed over the ground, ash and dirt covering up the red embroidery that lined it.

She laughed, her own laughter but a weak echo of the Laughing Demon’s cackle that filled the village and could be felt in Madeleine’s very bones.

She lifted the hem of her cloak when she had to cross a puddle of blood and dropped it again once she had crossed it.

There was a gust of hot and cold wind, and laughter cackled right into her ear.

Madeleine blinked.

When she opened her eyes, Risa stood in front of her. Torn, leathery wings flared out behind her and dwarfed the both of them. Her horns had grown to impressive size, curled forward and razor-sharp.

Risa smiled, it was the smile that sent icy-cold pinpricks down Madeleine’s spine. Today, it was her favorite of Risa’s smiles.

She inhaled deeply and welcomed the pinpricks of fear like dear friends. The demon’s skin felt harder when she cupped her face, a little bit brittle, almost as if the thin veneer of humanity she wore was particularly thin today.

Madeleine returned her smile. “You are beautiful.”

Risa looked pleased. “And you, beloved, are mine.”


End file.
